Wednesday Jan 31 |
 | Running Smooth 10:00 [2] | |
| |
| Warm-up with Lehel. |
| Orienteering City/Park (wet) 30:23 [4] 5.3 km (5:44 / km) | |
| |
| WET at Byrne Creek. Forked course, had fun in the lead with Thomas, who was on the other fork. I got the long fork just before a long running leg, and I could not catch up after that. He beat me by a minute again. |
| |
| C • WET 3 |
| Running Smooth 15:00 [2] | |
| |
| Cool-down. Picking up flags. |
Tuesday Jan 30 |
| Running Rough 1:25:00 [2] | |
| |
| Long run on Baden Powell in the dark. Started behind Andrea's house and ran towards Grouse. Turned around about 10 minutes past Mosquito Creek, where the trail gets narrow and steep on the last section to the gondola. Running with a headlamp was no problem, at least on a dry night, but you had to be careful on the downhill. |
Sunday Jan 28 |
| XC Skate 1:56:00 [4] 30 km (3:52 / km) | |
| |
| The 30 km version of the Overlander Ski Marathon at Stake Lake. Did this race in 1:48 last year, but knew I would be much slower this year. Tried to pace myself better, to be able to keep a nice constant pace. Did the first loop in 36 and the second in 37 and didn't feel too bad. Another 37 minute loop and I would have come in at 1:50, only 2 minutes slower than last year. However, I had built up too much lactic at this point and I completely stiffened up on the last loop, which took me 43 minutes. I didn't run out of fuel, I just had too much lactic to get up the hills.
Well, I haven't done much tough long distance running in the last half year, and I have hardly skied at all this winter, so not too bad given that background. |
Saturday Jan 27 |
| XC Skate 1:15:00 [2] | |
| |
| Skiing with Andrea at Stake Lake. Did part of the race course and some other trails. |
Wednesday Jan 24 |
| Running Smooth 20:00 [2] | |
| |
| Warm-up. |
| Orienteering City/Park (wet) 19:01 [4] 3 km (6:20 / km) | |
| |
| Sprint distance WET at Queen E. Thomas and I had the same fork, but I could not keep up. He beat me by a minute. |
| Running Smooth 20:00 [2] | |
| |
| Cool-down. Thomas and I ran every odd control backwards. |
Sunday Jan 21 |
| Running Smooth 40:00 [3] | |
| |
| A short run on the streets in the freezing rain in Lynn Valley. I enjoyed running up some of the big hills, but overall a pretty miserable experience. But the hot shower was nice after! |
Saturday Jan 20 |
| Hiking 3:00:00 [1] | |
| |
| Last year I did not log any hiking here, since I do not consider it training. I still don't, of course, but I thought it would be fun to log it, to have something to look back to at the end of the year.
Climbed the Stawamus Chief in the snow with Andrea and Molnar. It was a rare beautiful day with wonderful sunshine. The sun was filtering through the trees and made for some nice photos. We wanted to attempt the second peak, but halfway up we came to a very dangerous spot in the snow, so had to turn back. We climbed the first peak instead. |
| |
| C • NIce pics!! 2 |
Wednesday Jan 17 |
| Running Rough 50:00 [2] | |
| |
| Placing and picking up flags for the WET I was organizing. |
Tuesday Jan 16 |
| Running Rough 55:00 [3] | |
| |
| Run in the snow at Deer Lake with Markez and Thomas. Very low impact, but hard work. Fun! |
Sunday Jan 14 |
| Orienteering Forest 57:43 [4] | |
| |
| Local race at Watershed Park on the snow. First time I used my Icebugs here in Vancouver in over 4 years! Great course by Thomas, that had a first loop on the old 1:10, then a super fun sprint loop on the new 1:4, up and down the ravines, and then a final loop on the 1:10. I'm sure out of shape, but didn't make any big mistakes in the navigation. |
| Running Rough 30:00 [2] | |
| |
| Picking up controls. |
Saturday Jan 6 |
| Orienteering Forest 55:00 [3] | |
| |
| The only training session during this holiday in Sweden. The first entry in the log this year was a very nice run on the Ryssbergen map, close to my mum's apartment. Terrain is very good and there was no snow. Ran a course at medium pace and made sure I had map contact all the way. |
Wednesday Jan 3 |
| Note | |
| |
| This first year that I have been logging my training and racing on Attackpoint has been a very intense one indeed. In April I met Andrea and life changed a lot! :) Later, after the summer there was an extremely stressful period in September, as I was the meet director for the BC Champs and at the same time I had a dead line at work. Also the year ended with a long stretch of hard and stressful work at the office trying to complete the products we're working on.
The number of days I have been sick this year is a staggering 61, two full months of sickness! This has never happened in my adult life before. The killer was a 5 week long virus and bacterial infection combo that I was fighting all of May and half of June. Several people at the office caught the exact same thing. It was weird. Clearly, one goal for 2007 is to cut down on the sick days... :)
I logged a total of 169 hours of activity in 2006, which is pretty far from the 250 I had hoped for. 34 hours of orienteering in the forest and almost 28 hours of orienteering in city/park environment. That's a good percentage of actual orienteering for a place like Vancouver as your base for living, where there is no good terrain close to the city.
Despite all the wonderful and weird stuff in my life this year, I managed to do some pretty amazing orienteering! Considering the circumstances this year, I feel like I had some ok performances. Here is a list of my 5 favorite races this year:
1: 3rd leg at Jukola, the long night, on the GVOC team. A memory for life. The first time ever a Canadian club team did this race. Amazing event in all aspects. Great terrain, tough and tricky. I had a great run with only a minute of mistakes in 110 minutes of running.
2: Middle at NAOC in Ontario. I made over 3 minutes of mistakes on 2 controls, missing the podium, but the rest of the course I had a solid run in very difficult terrain. It was a heavenly week of orienteering. Great terrain and courses. Fantastic weather and amazing hospitality at the Piller estate.
3: Long at the Western Canadian Champs in Whitehorse, Yukon. The best planned course that I ran this year. Great and difficult route choice and tricky detailed navigation in between. Didn't have a clean race, but everyone else made huge mistakes and I ended up winning this one, which is always fun :) I love orienteering in Whitehorse and I had a great weekend staying with Ross and his family.
4: Sprint at the US Team fund raiser in Florida. I never thought I would run orienteering in the sandy pine forest of Florida. Another memory for life! This race was early in the season when I was in decent shape. The sprint course was a pretty easy one, but I had a very fast and clean race. The one other race that I won this year.
5: Middle at Barebones. Canadian Team trial in amazingly nice pine forest terrain in Alberta. I was sick with a virus and I later learned that I had a bacterial infection in my ears as well... I ran a slow, but technically close to perfect race and ended up 3rd in stiff competition. I think a lot of the runners who were trying out for the team were nervous and made mistakes. Smokey Lake had some truly heavenly terrain!
My goals for 2007 is to be (much) less sick and be more consistent with my training through the year, aiming at around 200 hours. The only event I'm sure I will be doing at the moment is the 5-day event in Czech Republic in August, since Andrea's club is organizing it, but I'm sure I will go to some other wonderful spots in the world for orienteering as well. |